Philosophy 1020 Lecture Notes - Lecture 23: Nominalism, Empiricism
26 Jan 2016
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Plato: whiteness: we couldn"t understand experiences we haven"t had unless they came from somewhere else. We know what equality is but we haven"t actually experienced so it must be part of a different world of experience. Things like tall, short, etc, we put in general terms but something must give us those ideas. In some sense, universals exist in name only, the universe is made up of particulars. Nominalism is view that the world is particulars (individual things) We make the categories with our names for them. There are such thing as homosexual acts not a homosexual, we call them homosexuals and make them a category based off of particular activities. Nominalism" is, as we saw last class, ambiguous. Its linguistic root is nominal": pertaining to names. This gets us the main idea: in some sense, universals exist in name only. Here"s hume: "tis a principle generally receiv"d in philosophy, that every thing in nature is individual.
